Hong Kong: Day Uno

So I am in Hong Kong.

The flight was as you would expect: long. 13 hours plus change to be exact. Some punk failed to get on the plane, and we were stuck standing on the terminal for a while, though it definitely wasn't the nine hour horror show that one of the attendants reported on Cathay Pacific. (She was there!) The flight finally got off the ground, and on the way to the Mysterious East we went.

The men in front of me were Coaches - one actually, one god knows what but just as obnoxious. They began the flight by noting how they were going to survive on cans of tuna fish in Hong Kong because they like "normal" food. They then proceeded to be astonished that the Ghanian crew member actually lived in Hong Kong, which somehow proceeded into a discussion of the hotness of Singapore Airline's stewardesses. Impressed, the man to the far left noted, "Man, when they hit 23, they're done. They're all....go to accounting," followed by a deep drunken chuckle. Oy vey. I would wake perodically to hear them discussing their "peak sexual experience," as delivered by a particularly knowing Thai hooker. This was not pleasant.

What was pleasant was my seat mate, a nice woman from San Francisco who originally hailed from Guangzhou. Her grandmother was ill and she was meeting her family in Shenzen, the special economic zone across the river from Hong Kong, and the poor thing was going to have to go through customs twice in one day. She told me about her kids and about her views on raising children, and it was all quite interesting, especially in terms of her conflict with her husband: she wanted her kids to relax and do what they wanted, and he wanted to push them. She tied this into the changes China has experienced: "Now, you can drive up to my house in my little village outside Guangzhou. Before, you couldn't do that - but when I was a kid, we played outside and all were friends, and we were carefree. Now it's all push push push." I think it was a nice summary of the issues both China and the U.S are encountering: where do we *stop* pushing?

But enough philosophy.

My first sight of Asia ever was a golf course, sitting on a pretty beachy island off what I presume was Taiwan. We flew right over Japan but the clouds covered it so completely that I was none the wiser. In any case, we arrived in Hong Kong on time. Flying over the city was one of the most impressive flights of my life. Hong Kong has a dramatic beauty and scale that is utterly unequaled by any city I've been in before. I love San Francisco and thought it was impressive before today - in terms of scale, energy, and vigor, it is nothing compared to Hong Kong. It's like a blown up version of San Francisco, a clean and safe version of New York. I'm already in love and I haven't been here a day. We came out of the airport and it felt curiously like Florida, albeit with Chinese characters and everyone driving on the wrong side of the road. The humidity was cloistering and amazingly comforting for me - I felt like I could never be cold again, and that is beautiful for the chronically freezing like myself.

We arrived at the lovely Conrad Hilton, where we saw a thick British man and his exceedingly obvious hooker going up the elevator with us - hysterical. We then watched the fireworks and laser show go off all over the city, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the handover to China. It was epic, and it wasn't even July Fourth - they weren't even TRYING that hard. But I was hungry, damn hungry, having gone 13 hours on pretzels and jelly beans, and we hit the American Restaurant nearby in Wanchai.

Despite the name, the American specializes in Cantonese food, and it was one of my mother's old and stalwart hangouts when she was my age. She claims it was "bigger and uglier" in her time, but the current space is rather attractive, all wood and mirrors and soft cream walls. But the attitude was pure Chinese: loud, busy, and frenetic, just the way I like it. The food was excellent. Eating Chinese food in Hong Kong truly reveals what a sad mirror of the original Chinese food in America is, even in California or in Chinatown: these were flavors refracted, and I doubt this was the best place in town. We had many dishes, but I loved the thick, doughnutty onion cakes and the Schezhuan chicken best. I discovered I had never had real Schezuan food before: this was brimming with peppercorn and scallions, a thick flavor I hadn't known before. I want more.

We adjourned to Wanchai, where my mom pointed out the bars and I flirted vaguely with really huge doormen standing in the alleyways. The hookers are common and all seem to wear the same outfit: tiny tiny black hot pants with humongous black boots. The white girls all crowd together, giggling and wearing next to nothing - only expected somewhere so hot and humid. Wednesday's is free drink night for ladies.

I believe this may be the promised land. But I need sleep. Actual photos tomorrow, I promise.

Hong Kong: Some Background

I am unable to escape from Hong Kong.

My mother lived there for her formative teenage years with the rest of her family, an interlude that they all enjoyed immensely. This means that all 18 years of my life have been filled with a near constant stream of Stories About Hong Kong. I've heard about the neighborhoods, the house keeper, the food, the locals, the British, the bars - pretty much every single quirk that my family encountered whilst there in the seventies. My parents went back for a visit when I was very young - 3 or 4 - and I mostly remember receiving an incredibly awesome plastic Chinese dragon as a souvenir. Obviously it was inevitable I would have to go to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a modern, fancy, and fast-paced city, setting the pace for the rest of China's somewhat unnerving capitalist explosion. It has not always been that way. People have lived on Hong Kong in one capacity or another for over 5000 years, but there were no big doings until the Tang dynasty, where, due to the proximity of Guangdong as an important trading port, Hong Kong's New Territories became a catch-all port for all manner of capitalism - legal, illegal, and shades of grey in between. The Mongol invasion of 1276 saw the beleaguered Song court decamp to Kowloon, which didn't help matters much - the child emperor, Zhao Bing, drowned himself with his underlings after being routed in the battle of Yamen.

The population expanded during the Mongol period, but not much else of note happened until the Opium Wars, when the British got rather kerflumpt over the fact that the Chinese decided they didn't want opium anymore. During this conflict, the British occupied Hong Kong Island in January of 1841, claiming it as a colony. It officially was ceded to the English in 1842 under the Treaty of Nanking, wherein it became a formal Crown Colony, eventually leading to its curious juxtaposition of dim sum and cricket. (The Chinese and British did share bad teeth.) In 1898, the British decided to expand their holdings for security reasons, leasing the New Territories in the Second Convention of Peking - which was set to expire on June 30th of 1997.

Hong Kong grew and grew and grew, housing 1.6 million people by 1941. The British, holding to usual form, did their best to keep the Chinese locals from holding any power, preventing them from living on Victoria Peak or participating in a meaningful way in government. World War II, a period of nastiness for pretty much everyone, saw the Japanese occupation, lasting from 1941 to 1945, wherein the Japanese treated the natives horribly, cut rations, and dramatically reduced the population by means of deportation and general bad treatment. After 1945 and the Communist takeover, Hong Kong's population began to boom again, as mainland Chinese came over to escape the new regime (and the Great Leap Forward.)

Hong Kong got richer and richer, owing to the ascendant manufacturing industry in the 1960's. It became a business and tourism center, and great advances in education were made as well. Hong Kong was a very nice place to be indeed, with a high standard of living and an exciting social life, fed both by Chinese influence and a healthy influx of travelers from all over the world, who were thrilled to find themselves at Susie Wong strip clubs and sleazy, sleazy bars.

The 1997 handover back to China began to loom in the eighties, prompting many people to emigrate to wherever would take them. On July 1st, 1997, the British officially handed back Hong Kong to the Chinese government. Concern over the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government has been raised, but so far, this has only been expressed through peaceful protest. Hong Kong's economy is still chugging along, and it's still a cosmopolitan city with a profusion of bars, knock-off fashion stores, and tremendous amounts of dim sum. We can only hope it remains that way.


(My mom's old haunt in Hong Kong. We'll see if it's still there.)